Blog Azeroth: Shared Topic "Wow Faux Pas"

Blog Azeroth proposes a new topic for bloggers to discuss every week. This week is courtesy of Ninevi of Flask Half Empty.

A faux pas, noun, \ˈfō-ˌpä, fō-ˈ\ is a violation of accepted social norms (for example, standard customs or etiquette rules). The term comes originally from French, and literally means "misstep" or "false step". (via Wikipedia) Shared Topic: Do you think there any faux pas in WoW? If so, please explain your thoughts or maybe share your own memories and experiences! Feel free to include serious ideas (ie: etiquette in LFD/LFR) and silly ones alike (ie: fashion disasters in transmog)!

Let me start by saying I feel like there is an unwritten code of conduct in WoW, one that all good, respectful players know instinctively. I've given the rules a bit of thought and what I think it all boils down to is "If you wouldn't do it to someone in real life, don't do it online."  

I feel like with the introduction of many of the tools that make WoW accessible to people with very rigid schedules has brought on the consequence of exposing decent, knowledgeable players to more ignorant players who are looking for a free ride in dungeon and raid groups. It used to be that you could only play with other characters on your server. If you had a bad reputation on your server you didn't get into any groups. For example, during Wrath on my server there was a mage who was notoriously poorly geared.  He would spend peak hours in trade chat spamming for an invite for ToC, which was current content at the time. Now eventually he did gear up but his reputation for being lazy prevented him getting invites into raids. These days no matter your reputation, you can get a dungeon group, and even a raid group with no prior screening and with people you never encounter again. This added anonymity seems to give a lot of added freedom to ignore the rules of conduct.

Here are some of the Dungeon faux pas I've encountered:

1. Intentional Non-Tank Pulling. I'm not talking about accidental fear pulling or when a dps switches into tank spec because your tank has been afk for ages. I'm talking about the idiot in the group who intentionally runs off and pulls another group, usually while you are killing a perfectly good group already.
2. Needing on things you don't need. Related: Needing on everything. This applies to the guy who needs on all of the greens "for enchanting" and the DPS who needs on tank gear and steals it from the tank. Easily avoided by asking permission first.
3. Signing up for a tank or healer role, and running as a DPS spec. I know, the DPS queue can be long, but it doesn't matter when you get booted from every group you enter because your cpec in wrong.
4. Starting an escort quest before everyone in the group has the quest. 'Nuff said.
5. Wearing gear with inappropriate stats. The image below was a mage in Heroic Oculus at level 80. For real.